Penitence
by Tez
Summary: AU post tPitH. "In some ways, my intelligence is a handicap." "I suspect it's the same for superpowers." Zack/OC, B/B, Hodgela.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own Bones, and I'm not making any money off of this. More's the pity.

Note: I'm one of the multitudes who was dissatisfied by the Season 3 finale. This is my attempt to get some lemonade out of those lemons and indulge my love of shadowy government agencies at the same time.

* * *

"Cassandra?"

"Back here," came the absentminded reply. Vivian stepped around the partition and into Cassandra's work space, which was, if possible, even more disorganized than usual.

"Rather messy, isn't this?" Vivian inquired, and Cassandra shrugged as she turned around to face the British psychologist.

"I know where everything is." She looked _through_ Vivian rather than _at_ her, but after eight years Vivian was used to it. "You have something for me."

It wasn't a question. Cassandra didn't tend to ask questions. There was no point in asking when she already knew the answers. Vivian usually answered as though they were questions, however, mostly because she preferred the illusion that they were actually having a normal conversation.

"I do," Vivian said, showing her the stack of folders she held. By agreed-upon convention, she didn't attempt to hand anything to the younger woman; Cassandra would pick them up if she chose.

She chose. Her fingers brushed Vivian's as she took the folders, and she nearly dropped the whole stack, but recovered admirably and managed to set them down on her desk without losing any of them.

Vivian didn't remark on the physical contact or Cassandra's response to it. For Cassandra, that was a mild reaction to being touched unexpectedly.

"These are all of them."

"All of the males between the ages of eighteen and thirty who are currently institutionalized in the US and have a known skill set that would be compatible with your work here." She watched as Cassandra flipped through the files, seemingly at random. "If I knew what you were looking for, I might be able to be of more assistance."

"If I knew what I was looking for, I would have found it already," Cassandra pointed out, picking up another file as she discarded the one she held. "I'm not…"

Her voice trailed off as her eyes glazed over. Vivian had the presence of mind to catch the file as Cassandra dropped it, setting it back on the desk as she counted in her head. Ten seconds of trance was all Cassandra was currently allowed, after the latest debacle, and after that Vivian had every intention of taking the glass of water off of the desk and tossing it in her face. She was in no mood to deal with another of the young woman's unresponsive states.

She made it to eight before Cassandra blinked, clenching her hands reflexively.

"Found it?" Vivian asked mildly. Cassandra shook her head as though to clear it and picked the file up again, gingerly this time. She paged through it until she found the face sheet where the subject's information was listed.

"Him," she informed Vivian, sounding relieved. "It's him."

Vivian took the file back, nearly as relieved as Cassandra was. The blonde had gone into one of those unresponsive trances four months ago. It had lasted far longer than Vivian was comfortable with, and when she came out of it she insisted that she'd sensed someone somewhere who was supposed to become her partner. Vivian had been delighted - she'd been trying to talk Cassandra into taking a partner for nearly five years - but the lack of details about this mystery person she was supposed to find had made her job extremely difficult.

Through a motley assortment of methods, from plain old detective work to high-tech computer hacking and one questionable attempt at scrying in the lake that ended in a spectacular splashing war, their team had narrowed the range of candidates from the entire population of the world to these twelve files. At this point, Vivian didn't care who this man was or what strings she would have to pull to have him transferred to Pine Hills. At least now they could all stop _looking _for him and start getting some actual work done.

"Oh, Cassandra, he's handsome," Vivian pointed out hopefully, holding up the photo that had been clipped to the face sheet. "He has a very nice smile."

"You're not very subtle, Dr. Carrington," Cassandra pointed out. Vivian shrugged.

"What's the point of subtlety when you already know what I'm thinking?" she rebutted, clipping the picture back onto the page. "Hmm. McKinley. State institution. Understaffed, underfunded…getting him transferred to Pine Hills shouldn't be any trouble."

"You're disappointed." Cassandra sounded amused. "What, you wanted to have to fight the system to get him?"

"I enjoy the occasional battle against governmental authority," Vivian allowed, not bothering to try and hide her own amusement. "Try and stay out of my head, would you?"

"Would if I could," Cassandra replied gaily, handing Vivian the rest of the files. "When do you think you'll have him here?"

Typically, the amount of wheel-greasing and assorted paperwork that had to be done to transfer a patient from a state institution to a private one took several weeks. Vivian had been planning for this eventuality for nearly a month, however, and she'd been pushing for Cassandra to take on a partner for far longer than that. And on top of it all, he was a reasonably attractive young man near Cassandra's own age. She was certain that she could speed things along considerably.

"Very soon." She looked down at his file, now perched triumphantly on top of the stack of possibilities. "Zachary Addy. Welcome to the team."

* * *

Zack didn't have visitors on Thursdays. Hodgins and Angela visited on Saturdays, Sweets came every Wednesday, and if Dr. Brennan or Agent Booth visited, it was usually on Sunday afternoon. He was surprised, therefore, when one of the orderlies came to find him in the day room and told him there was a visitor waiting for him in one of the consultation rooms.

He abandoned his solitary game of chess without a second thought. He'd never seen the point of playing against himself, since he knew exactly what strategy he was using and how to counter it, but there was no one else in McKinley anywhere near his level of skill. Once he'd tired of beating Bill from 5C and Larry from 6A in under ten minutes, he'd begun playing against himself out of sheer boredom. His occupational therapist approved, saying that the fine motor control required to manipulate the pieces was good for his still-healing hands. It was also a way to make the long hours go by.

He didn't recognize the woman waiting for him in the consultation room, and he was fairly certain he would have remembered her if he'd met her before. She was very tall for a woman, approximately six feet, and her hair was a very bright shade of auburn. She smiled at him like she knew him, so he smiled tentatively back, and she rose to her feet.

"You must be Dr. Zachary Addy," she greeted him, and he nodded, grateful that she was observant enough not to extend her hand for him to shake. "I'm Dr. Vivian Carrington. I'm a psychologist. Feel free to call me Vivian."

"Nice to meet you," he said, careful to observe the social pleasantries that several of the therapists here kept pointing out his tendency to forget. "I already have a psychologist. Several, in fact."

She waved her hand airily, as though shooing away the suggestion of his other psychologists.

"I'm not here to analyze you, Dr. Addy. I have a proposition for you."

"A proposition?"

"I am part of a clandestine team that investigates various crimes by private contract with the CIA, MI-5, and several other intelligence agencies. We specialize in the identification and stratification of terroristic threats, finding missing persons, and solving 'cold cases', which we define as the resolution of felony crimes, mainly homicides, committed greater than ten years ago with no current investigative leads."

Zack stared at her. "That's interesting," he said at last. "Uh, why are you here? Telling me this?"

"Because, Dr. Addy," she replied, leaning forward in her chair, "we would like you to join us."

"I am currently institutionalized in a state hospital for the criminally insane," he pointed out. "I must admit to a considerable amount of confusion as to what, exactly, I could do to assist your organization from here."

"You wouldn't," Vivian said calmly. "Here is what I'm offering, Dr. Addy. You will be transferred to the Pine Hills Residential Facility, which is, by the way, a good deal more comfortable than McKinley. While there, you will receive whatever psychiatric and medical treatment you require to deal with the unpleasantness that resulted in your current institutionalization. Your initial term with us will last one month, at the end of which we will meet again and discuss whether your participation in the team has been sufficiently beneficial. If it has, you will remain with us at Pine Hills until I am satisfied that you are able to function in society, both in general and specifically without risking recidivism of your previous criminal actions, and then you will be released on your own recognizance with the full support of the court. I hope that after this occurs, you will continue to work with our team, as most of our members have."

"This is extremely irregular," Zack said, not certain how to respond. "Will the US Attorney's office allow this arrangement to occur?"

"I did mention we work with the CIA, did I not?" Vivian said pointedly. "I assure you that this scenario has played itself out several times with satisfactory results for all involved."

"You said if my participation in the team was sufficiently beneficial, I would be allowed to stay. What if it isn't?"

"Then you will be transferred back here; no harm, no foul." She leaned forward again, catching and holding his gaze. "With one notable exception, Dr. Addy. Our team prides itself on remaining covert. If you were to reveal any details of our existence to anyone outside of the team, you would not survive the experience."

She watched patiently as he mulled the idea over. _Here, kitty kitty, _she thought, hoping she'd enticed him enough to convince him to join them. If she hadn't, Cassandra was going to make her life hell.

"I should add," she said, when his pondering had taken too long for her comfort, "that this is a unique opportunity for you, Dr. Addy. Regardless of the eventual outcome of your psychiatric treatment, the fact remains that you have confessed to felony murder and been declared _non compos mentis_ by the court. You will never be able to testify as to your scientific findings in court as a reliable expert witness again, so your work at the Jeffersonian Institute has come to a definitive end. I believe you would have serious trouble finding any academic institution to accept you as either faculty or student with this unfortunate stain on your record."

He seemed more resigned than upset at her assessment of his future opportunities or lack thereof, which meshed with the profile she'd already formed of him: extremely logical, very self-contained, and emotionally stunted. She was probably only restating things he'd realized and accepted months ago.

"Our organization, however, is unconcerned with your past history so long as it does not interfere with your ability to perform the tasks that we request of you."

"You don't care if your team members murder people?"

"We don't care if they _have_ murdered people, Dr. Addy, so long as they don't do it again. Our assessments are classified and are not used in official court proceedings, so we don't care if the court doesn't trust you. If we are satisfied with your work and we trust you, then that will suffice."

"What would my work entail?" he asked finally, and Vivian exercised all of her formidable self-control to keep from grinning. She had him.

"At this point, I would say mainly the determination of cause of death in cold homicides and the identification of heretofore unidentified skeletons. Once you've worked with us for a while, I'll have a better idea of your skill set and how best to employ it."

"That seems…rational." She could tell from his tone that he wasn't entirely convinced, but he was going to agree anyway. In all honesty, they really were his best option. "I…would like to accept your offer."

"Excellent!" This time she let the grin slip, and was rewarded with a hesitant smile from her team's newest member. He clearly had severely impaired social functioning - Asperger's at least, and from what she'd read in his file, she wouldn't be surprised if there were elements of post-traumatic stress on top of that - but despite it, he managed the basic give and take of conversation and replied to her social smile with one of his own. It was better than she'd expected. She couldn't wait to introduce him to Cassandra.


	2. Chapter 2

Dr. Carrington had been right, Zack decided. Pine Hills was a much more comfortable facility than McKinley.

The room they'd given him was far larger than his room at McKinley. It had a queen-sized bed instead of a twin, and the floors were polished hard wood with several thick rugs that were soft under his bare feet. The color scheme was a pleasing mix of light and dark blues rather than stark hospital-issue white. There was a mahogany dresser and a matching desk, and the outer wall had a large window that looked out on a picturesque lake.

He opened the drawer of the desk, surprised to find an assortment of pens and pencils. His fingers were still clumsy, especially inside his thick gloves, but he managed to take one of the pencils out of the drawer to inspect it.

"Ah, Dr. Addy! I trust the accommodations are satisfactory?"

Zack turned to find Dr. Carrington standing in the doorway. He held up the pencil, confused.

"Should these be in here?"

"Is there a different type of writing implement you would prefer?"

"At McKinley, the patients weren't permitted to have pens or pencils without direct supervision."

Dr. Carrington raised her eyebrows at him. "Are you planning to harm yourself or someone else with them?"

"No."

"There you go, then."

Zack had the feeling he'd missed something. He would have asked her what it was, but she had already moved on to a new topic.

"Dr. Addy, is it safe to say that you judge things based on logic and reason?"

"I would agree with that statement, yes."

"Excellent." She stepped into the room, closing the door behind her, and gestured for him to take a seat on the bed. He obeyed as she pulled the chair out from the desk and sat down. "What is your opinion on psychic phenomena?"

He hadn't been certain of what she was going to ask him, but that question hadn't even crossed his mind as a possibility. It took him several moments to formulate a response.

"In general, the concept seems to have been disproved in every large-population clinical trial that has been performed, although there have been some intriguing case studies whose results suggest that the existence of psychic phenomena should not be completely discounted."

"So if you yourself saw irrefutable evidence of someone displaying a psychic ability, you would believe it was possible?"

"If the evidence were irrefutable, it would have to be not only possible but true. It's a basic rule of logic."

"Lovely." Dr. Carrington stood abruptly, beckoning Zack to follow her.

"Where are we going?" he wondered aloud as they walked out of his room and down the hall. She smiled at him over her shoulder.

"I'm going to introduce you to an intriguing case study."

* * *

Zack stayed silent as they walked down the hall, turned the corner, and walked through two unmarked doors. Dr. Carrington stopped at the third unmarked door and tapped a code into the keypad that caused a compartment in the wall to open, revealing a flat black screen that Zack deduced was a hand scanner. She placed her palm on it, giving him an apologetic look.

"I'm afraid that until your hands are sufficiently healed, you'll have to be escorted in and out of the work area."

Zack nodded. The door swung open to reveal another hallway exactly like the one they'd just come down. The room that she led him to, however, didn't resemble any of the other rooms he'd seen in Pine Hills so far. It was windowless, with a vaulted ceiling and bright lighting that reminded him of the Jeffersonian. He found it oddly comforting.

"Cassandra?" called Dr. Carrington.

"Yes?"

Zack blinked, turning to his right to locate the source of the voice. A young woman stepped out from behind one of the partitions, giving them both a warm smile.

"You must be Dr. Addy," she said, her smile widening as she approached them. "Good heavens. I've never met anyone so self-contained."

Zack had no idea what she meant by that, but the tone of her voice suggested that it was intended as a positive rather than a negative remark.

"Thank you?" he guessed, and Dr. Carrington chuckled.

"Dr. Zack Addy, this is Cassandra Dalton. She's been with our team for almost nine years. Her specialties are psychometry and retrocognition."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously," Cassandra told him, her tone solemn but her eyes sparkling. "Please, call me Cassie. Only Dr. Carrington calls me Cassandra."

"It's a lovely proper name and you should use it," Dr. Carrington insisted. It had the ring of a repeated complaint.

"It makes me sound old," Cassie replied firmly. "_Please_, Dr. Addy, call me Cassie."

Zack smiled. It surprised him; he hadn't really been expecting to smile, but watching the two of them interact was like watching Cam and Angela bicker, and being included in it felt a little bit like being home again.

"My friends call me Zack."

The words slipped out before he could stop them. It was, of course, a factual statement, but even he knew that in a situation like this, it would be construed by both Dr. Carrington and Cassie as an implicit request to be granted 'friend' status. He was pretty sure that wasn't the way one was supposed to begin a working relationship while incarcerated for insanity, although admittedly he had a limited amount of experience from which to draw.

"Zack," Cassie echoed, and her smile suggested that perhaps his gaffe hadn't been as serious as he feared. "I'm so glad to finally meet you. We've been looking for you for months."

"I've been in the same place for five months," he offered, attempting to be helpful. "McKinley State Hospital. Why were you looking for me?"

"I didn't know it was you I'd been looking for until two days ago. Otherwise, I would have found you sooner." She stopped talking abruptly, staring at him in a manner he wasn't certain was a good sign.

Behind him, he heard Dr. Carrington start to count under her breath. She made it to 'five' before Cassie tilted her head up to look him squarely in the eye.

"Would you mind if I touched your arm?"

"No." Finally, a straightforward question he could answer with certainty. He had no idea why she wanted to touch his arm, but he supposed it didn't really matter.

Her fingers brushed the bare skin of his forearm tentatively, as though she was afraid of what his reaction might be. He held perfectly still, determined not to interfere in any way with whatever she was attempting to ascertain by touching him, and her grip tightened.

"You…" Cassie blinked up at him several times, as though she couldn't believe what she'd discovered. She turned suddenly to Dr. Carrington, but she still held Zack's arm and the unexpected tug knocked him off balance. He stumbled into Cassie, remembering at the last second not to use his injured free hand to catch himself. With a mix of dumb luck and Cassie's obviously superior coordination, they both stayed on their feet, and as soon as Zack was certain he was stable enough not to fall, he stepped back out of her personal space.

Or tried to, anyway. She still held his forearm in a grip that was becoming tight enough to interfere with his circulation.

"I didn't expect that," she said, sounding stunned. "I didn't expect you to bump me."

"Neither did I," Zack offered, feeling like he'd missed something important in the subtext of this interaction. "Would you be willing to loosen your grip on my arm? Decreased blood flow is detrimental to the healing process currently occurring in my hands."

She dropped his arm as though it had scalded her. When she turned to face Dr. Carrington, he surreptitiously rubbed his wrist to stimulate blood flow. She was evidently much stronger than she appeared.

"It was only a little more than background noise," Cassie said slowly. "Like handling something moderately infused. I've never…"

Cassie trailed off. Dr. Carrington was beaming at him as though he'd done something clever. He had rarely felt less clever than he did at that particular moment.

"Would someone be able to explain what's happening?" he asked politely. "Whenever it's convenient? I feel extremely unprepared to handle this situation."

Dr. Carrington looked to Cassie, but she appeared to be lost in thought.

"I told you that Cassie is psychic," Dr. Carrington offered finally. "Her primary source of psychic sensory stimulus is touch. Much of the work she does for us involves handling objects that belonged to missing or deceased persons and giving her impressions of the circumstances surrounding the disappearance or death. Unfortunately, the same stimulus provided by objects is provided by people, but at much higher levels of intensity."

"Much, much higher." Cassie had rejoined the conversation. "With most people, it's like being pulled into a hurricane. I lose the input from all of my other senses." She shivered unconsciously. "It feels like suffocating. Like being crushed. If I'm prepared for it, if I know they're going to touch me, or I'm the one touching them, I can kind of steel myself against it. But when it's unexpected, it's - awful."

"It sounds awful," he agreed, wishing he were better at expressing sympathy. This would have been an opportune time for it. "That didn't happen when you touched me?"

Cassie shook her head. "You feel more like a…a gentle breeze. It's actually…nice." She shook her head again, this time in disbelief. "I never thought I'd ever be able to say that about touching someone. Ever."

"You were the one who sensed that your ideal partner was out there somewhere," Dr. Carrington pointed out, smiling as though she knew something they didn't. "You're the one who picked him out of all of the choices we found. Maybe this is why."

"Maybe it is." Cassie's voice was filled with wonder. "I never even guessed…"

Zack waited for her to finish her sentence, but she trailed off to stare, glassy-eyed, at a faraway point over his left shoulder.

"She does that," Dr. Carrington said fondly. "You'll get used to it."

"You'll have to," Cassie told him, back with them again. "Because we're going to be together for a very long time."

Zack considered her words. "Do you also claim proficiency in clairvoyance?" he asked, curious, and she laughed.

"Just call it a hunch."


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: Still not mine.

* * *

_McKinley State Hospital_

"What do you mean, he isn't here? He was involuntarily committed! He has to be here!"

"I'm sorry, Dr. Hodgins, but this record indicates that Dr. Addy was transferred to a different facility three days ago."

"Why?" Hodgins demanded as Angela put a restraining hand on his shoulder. "And why wasn't I told? I'm listed on his file as his emergency contact!"

"I'm sorry, Dr. Hodgins, but I don't have the authority to give out any information on our patients."

"Hodgins," Angela whispered, insistent, as she tugged him back from the receptionist's desk. "You're scaring that poor woman. Don't kill the messenger, all right? We'll find out what happened. I mean, Sweets is his therapist, right? He has to know."

"Sweets," Hodgins muttered, shaking off her restraining hand and turning back toward the door. "That kid is dead meat."

Angela shook her head in resignation, making a quick gesture of apology toward the receptionist before taking off after Hodgins. His fuse had been seriously shortened lately, and anything concerning Zack was likely to set him off. If she wanted Sweets to live through this encounter, she needed to be there.

* * *

Their lab might not have been as large as the Medico-Legal lab at the Jeffersonian, but it was certainly well-equipped. Zack had been provided with everything he'd requested, from chemical reagents to high-resolution monitors. He was currently using the latter, reviewing x-rays electronically with the help of a keyboard and mouse designed with extra-large keys that he could manipulate through his ungainly gloves. Dr. Carrington had supplied them without comment, which had saved him from the uncomfortable task of thanking her for accommodating his disability.

He'd identified a defect in one of the vertebrae that suggested the victim had been stabbed, likely with a single-edged blade, and he was typing up a brief report to that effect when Cassie's blonde head popped out from behind the partition that separated her work area from his.

"I'm hungry and so are you," she informed him, stretching her arms up above her head. "Let's go get something to eat."

He took a brief mental inventory and realized that he was, in fact, hungry. Over the past few days, he had been convinced that Cassie did, in fact, possess some manner of psychic ability; she was able to consistently and correctly state everything he was feeling, often before he himself was aware of it. He could imagine that many people would find that off-putting - he was certain that Hodgins, for example, would hate being continually told how he felt - but for Zack, it was exceedingly convenient. Since his arrival here, he hadn't had to find a way to put what he was feeling into words, a constant challenge in his life up to this point. Cassie also knew when he was confused by the figures of speech she used, and she explained herself without having to be asked. He actually found it to be somewhat of a relief.

"All right," he agreed, typing out the end of his sentence and saving the document before logging out of the system. Cassie gave him a sunny smile, looping her arm through his and tugging him toward the door. He'd noticed that she engaged in physical contact with him whenever possible, but given what she'd told him about her sensory response to touching other people, he felt it was safe to assume that she'd been severely deprived of physical contact throughout her lifetime. He had no objections to her using him to fill that void, especially considering that he'd experienced a relative lack of physical contact himself. She was killing two birds with one rock, as the saying went.

They made it halfway to the door before it opened. Dr. Carrington stepped in and Cassie stopped abruptly.

"Something's wrong."

"Not exactly," Carrington began, but she gave up at Cassie's impatient glare. "All right, something's wrong."

"Can we help?" Zack asked, and both Carrington and Cassie turned to smile at him. "What did I do?"

"You showed your concern for Dr. Carrington by offering to assist her before you even knew what the problem was, and you showed that you're already accepting the idea of the two of us as a team by offering my help as well," Cassie explained, rewarding him with another bright smile. Zack wasn't sure which was more surprising, that they would read so much into a three word question or that, for once, someone had actually bothered to explain the social nuance he'd missed.

"Very good, Cassandra," Carrington agreed. "I may make a psychologist out of you yet."

Cassie wrinkled her nose in disgust and Carrington chuckled.

"Just so. Anyway, the reason I am here is to inform you, Dr. Addy, that I just hung up with a Dr. Sweets from the FBI who was quite irritated with me for not consulting him before having you transferred here. I gave him our usual cover story, that you were transferred here because I intend to take you on as an intensive case study, which has the added benefit of being entirely true."

Carrington eyed him as though she thought he might protest, but he stayed silent. She'd been clear about the terms of his employment the first time they met, and they had included his receiving psychiatric treatment.

"I have informed him that during the first month of your treatment here, I will not permit you to interact with any visitors. That is also standard policy for our team. However, he was extremely insistent that he be allowed to see you, so I have agreed to allow him to observe you during an art therapy session."

"I haven't attended any art therapy sessions," Zack replied automatically, trying to figure out why Sweets would care so much about his transfer. Hodgins was probably making him check on Zack. It was nice to know that one of his old friends cared that he'd been transferred.

"This should be a delightful change of pace for you, then," Carrington informed him. "Cassandra, as his partner I expect you to be present also. Dr. Addy, the art therapy rooms are wired for video and sound, so allow me to remind you that you are not permitted to make any reference whatsoever to the team or our work here."

He nodded. "What should I talk about?"

"Art," she instructed brusquely. "Now, is it correct to assume that the two of you were heading to the dining hall?" At Cassie's nod, she continued, "Go have some lunch and be in the art therapy room in twenty minutes. There's a session at 2 o'clock and I've let Sarah know that you'll be joining her group. Dr. Sweets should be here at 2:15."

* * *

Vivian Carrington was not easily intimidated. A former member of MI-5, she'd participated in hundreds of life-threatening missions before finishing her doctorate and being offered the position as the head of her current team, so saying that she was intimidated by the five people standing in her office was perhaps a poor choice of words. She would, however, admit to being intrigued by them.

She'd only been expecting one of them, Lance Sweets, and she certainly hadn't expected his appearance. He looked no older than fifteen, with coltishly long limbs and an awkward carriage that told her he hadn't been at his current height long enough to become accustomed to it. The man next to him was shorter, stockier, and a good deal angrier. The woman holding _his_ arm was stunningly beautiful, despite the fact that she was visibly frustrated with both the shorter man and Dr. Sweets.

The couple standing off to one side intrigued her more than the rest put together, since neither of them appeared to actually want to be there. The woman, who she recognized from the dust jacket of one of her favorite novels as Temperance Brennan, was clearly uncomfortable with her surroundings. Not that Vivian could blame her; most people didn't enjoy mental institutions as a general rule. The man next to her looked…guilty was the best descriptor she could find. As though he blamed himself for something he was unwilling to admit even to himself.

"Dr. Sweets," she began, allowing her tone to convey a hint of irritation, "I seem to recall extending an invitation to observe Dr. Addy's art therapy session to you and only you. Have you decided to turn it into a social gathering?"

"I'm his next of kin," the angry man insisted. "If Sweets gets to see Zack, so do I."

"I'm sorry," said the beautiful woman, and Vivian got the feeling she spent a lot of her time apologizing for the entire group. "I'm Angela Montenegro. This is Jack Hodgins, and that's Seeley Booth and Temperance Brennan. We all worked with Zack."

"I see. This is highly irregular, Dr. Sweets."

"So is transferring my patient without my permission," Sweets rebutted, and Vivian inclined her head in acknowledgement of a good hit.

"Dr. Addy was the one who made the choice, Dr. Sweets. I personally feel that the program here will be far better able to meet his needs than McKinley would."

"Please let us see Zack." That was Brennan, and she sounded as guilty as Booth looked. "Just so we know he's all right."

"You care very much for him," Vivian observed. Brennan looked to Booth, but it was Sweets who answered.

"He's family."

* * *

The observation room was comfortably appointed, with a number of high-backed chairs and several large screen televisions that displayed the closed-circuit system of the institution. Booth sat down next to his partner, in the seat closest to the door, and watched as the British psychologist pulled up the footage from the art therapy room.

He wasn't entirely sure what he was doing here. He and Bones had been in the middle of an argument with Sweets about some stupid trust exercise, and Hodgins had come barreling in and grabbed Sweets by the collar, shouting about Zack. Once he'd separated the two of them, Angela explained that Zack had been moved to another facility. Sweets hadn't known anything about it, so he'd made some phone calls and somehow they'd all ended up here.

It wasn't that he didn't want to see Zack, exactly. It was just that maybe if he'd paid a little more attention to the kid, given him a little of the approval he'd so obviously craved or talked him out of going to Iraq, maybe things would have gone differently. Maybe he wouldn't be stuck in a mental hospital with his hands and his life completely wrecked.

Zack appeared on the screen and Booth shoved his discomfort away, studying the errant squint's appearance. He'd gone to see Zack with Bones last month, and he'd been horrified by how drained the kid looked: dull and lifeless, like a zombie. He could see a change in him from then to now. The bulky black gloves were still there, a paintbrush with an oversized handle currently held between his thumb and forefingers, but Zack's expression had changed. He was staring intently at the easel in front of him, and his eyes held the same spark they'd had back when he was Bones' assistant, before Iraq and Gormogon and everything else had conspired to take it away.

"I don't think I understand the assignment," Zack was telling the blonde at the easel next to his, who smiled at him and leaned over to look at his work.

"It's…black," she observed, and he nodded. He'd painted the entire canvas black, Booth realized.

"Sarah instructed us to paint 'darkness'. I believe perhaps I was too literal in my interpretation." He gestured to her easel. "Your painting is abstract and emotionally evocative. Mine is…not."

She laughed, but the laughter was kind. "Don't forget, I've been doing this a lot longer than you have. Here," she added, offering him a cup of paint. "Try using the black as your backdrop, and use the white to add something evocative."

"Evocative of darkness?"

"Yeah."

"I'm fairly certain I don't know how to do that."

The blonde laughed again, leaning closer to Zack, and Booth took the opportunity to look her over. She was young, maybe Sweets' age, with a smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks. Her light blonde hair was pulled back in a messy braid, and her vivid green eyes were complemented by her black tank top. Like Zack, she wore a white plastic ID bracelet that marked her as a patient.

"Who's the blonde?" Hodgins asked, a moment before Booth could ask the question. "She's totally got the hots for Zack."

"That's inappropriate on several levels, Dr. Hodgins," Sweets replied, and Carrington inclined her head in agreement.

"On top of which, Dr. Hodgins, it would be a breach of confidentiality for me to reveal any information about our other patients to you. Allowing you to observe in the first place was a questionable decision on my part -"

"Don't make us leave," Angela pleaded, kicking Hodgins discreetly in the shin. "He'll be good, I promise."

"Try some free association," the blonde was advising Zack on the screen. "See if you can come up with something that relates to darkness that you can paint."

"Free association," Zack muttered. "All right. Darkness…shadow…shade…ghost."

"Ghost?"

"'Shade' is an obscure term for 'ghost' or 'spirit', often used in 19th century British Literature."

"Ah." The blonde contemplated the black canvas. "So, a ghost in the shadow of a tree?"

Zack blinked at her, puzzled, and then smiled. "In the shade," he concluded, and she nodded in agreement.

"It's a positive sign that he's made friends with another patient so quickly," Sweets observed, and Carrington nodded.

"He's been modeling some of his social behavior after hers, and I've already noticed some improvement in his ability to participate in normal social interactions. If this continues, if could be a great asset to his treatment."

As they began to talk in psychobabble about group sharing and therapeutic milieus, Booth leaned in to Brennan, who was watching the screen raptly.

"He looks happier than he did at that other place," he offered. She nodded, not taking her eyes off the screen.

"I'm glad he has a friend," she said softly, hands clasped uselessly in her lap. "Maybe she'll pay more attention to him than we did."


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: Still not mine.

* * *

Zack leaned back on his elbows, appreciating the warmth of the early afternoon sun on his face. After a challenging morning of work for both of them, Cassie had asked him to join her out by the lake for a while, and he was glad now that he'd accepted.

"You look like a flower," Cassie said from beside him, laughter in her voice. "With your face turned toward the sun like that. I'll have to take you outside more often."

"I haven't had many opportunities to be outdoors," he admitted, thinking back to his tiny room at McKinley. "Several studies have shown that limiting exposure to sunlight can exacerbate a patient's existing depression."

"Like I said," she agreed, "I've got to get you outside more."

He tilted his head away from the sunlight, looking over at Cassie. She'd been working while he idled, and she was now surrounded by plucked flowers and grass stems.

"What are you doing?"

"Making daisy chains," she replied easily. "Do you want one? I'm almost finished with mine."

"What am I supposed to do with it?" he asked, and she giggled.

"Wear it, silly." She appraised him. "I'll make you a grass chain instead. It's less girly."

"All right," he agreed, uncertain why she would want him to wear a chain of grass but willing to play along.

He watched as she twisted the stems of the daisies together, clever fingers knotting them deftly into a long chain, and wondered where she'd learned to do that. Though he knew her very well in her present incarnation, he knew nothing about her past.

"Can I ask you a personal question?"

Cassie gave him a warm smile. "You can ask me anything, Zack."

"How did you end up here?"

She didn't answer right away, busying her fingers with finishing her daisy chain, and he wondered if he'd offended her.

"I killed a man," she said finally, her gaze still intently focused on the flowers. "He was a bad man, by anyone's definition, but I regret killing him."

"Why?" Zack asked sensibly. "Agent Booth has killed many people who could be considered bad. Dr. Brennan has killed several. I don't believe either of them regret their actions."

"Because I took away any chance he had to redeem himself," she replied, toying with the daisy chain. "I made it so that he'll never be able to atone for what he did."

"That…seems logical," he decided after a few moments. "Would you like me to share my reasons for incarceration in exchange for yours?"

That got a smile out of her, as his attempts at social niceties often did.

"I know what your file says," she told him, slipping the finished daisy chain onto her head like a crown. It was remarkably attractive on her. "And I know it's wrong."

"Oh?"

"You've never killed anyone." The statement was made in her most certain tone, suggesting that it was a fact she'd picked up via her psychic abilities. "People who've killed feel different to me. You never have…but you feel responsible anyway."

"I gave the killer advice on how to find his victim," he admitted. "I assisted him in cleaning the remains. I violated Dr. Brennan's trust and took remains from the lab for him, and I hid other remains there."

"Why?"

He considered the question. She wouldn't understand the complexities of the Master's logic; she had very high emotional intelligence, but her IQ was only slightly above average. Any explanation he gave her had to involve an emotional component if he wanted her to comprehend it.

"I thought I was helping to save the world," he offered at last. "He provided what appeared to be very solid logic demonstrating that assisting him would allow me to keep multitudes of people from dying."

"Including your friends," she said, dawning realization in her voice. "He told you that unless you helped him, your friends would be killed."

"And my family," he agreed, unsurprised that she'd picked up on that part of the story. "He knew them by name, and said that if he was aware of them, so was the enemy. He said that only he could protect them, and he would only do so if I assisted him."

"After your time in the Army…"

"I had become aware that people often have to make choice among several less than desirable options."

"He was the lesser of two evils," she interpreted, and he nodded.

She was silent for a few minutes, working on his grass chain. He went back to enjoying the sunlight and trying not to think about anything, with more success than he would have anticipated. Several of the therapists at McKinley had tried to convince him that sharing his story would make him feel better, but he'd dismissed their suggestions out of hand. Now, he wondered if he owed them an apology.

"You should tell Dr. Carrington what you told me," Cassie said finally, and he turned his head to look at her again. She smiled at him, slipping the finished grass chain around his neck. "I think it would help."

"It doesn't change what I did," he told her. She reached up with a piece of grass and tickled his nose, laughing when he jerked his head back in surprise.

"Yes, it does," she replied, abandoning her grass stems and flopping down next to him in the sunshine. Zack looked down at the grass chain around his neck, touching it carefully with one gloved finger. If Cassie thought it was important for him to tell Dr. Carrington, maybe he should. She was usually right about things like this.

"Knew you'd see it my way," she said drowsily, bumping his foot with hers in a companionable gesture, and he shook his head. She was also usually smug about being right.

"I heard that," Cassie told him, and he smiled.

"I intended you to."


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: Bones isn't mine.

A/N: Thanks to everyone who has reviewed - it's very motivating!

* * *

Cassie sat in the main day room, curled up in the big purple armchair with a book in her lap. She'd abandoned her reading in favor of watching Zack, who was playing chess against the Colonel. He'd spent days trying to talk her into playing with him, only to be disappointed when it turned out she really was as bad at the game as she'd claimed. It had been her idea for him to play with the Colonel, who was in Pine Hills for advancing Alzheimer's but whose chess skills were as sharp as they'd ever been. Now he had a chess partner who, if he wasn't exactly at Zack's level, was good enough to bring him to a draw three games out of four. She was just grateful not to have to play chess with Zack anymore. Strategy and tactics weren't her strong points, and Zack was several orders of magnitude more intelligent than she was. She was much happier this way, ensconced with the collected works of Jane Austen while Zack and the Colonel matched wits on the other side of the room.

She wouldn't have been out here at all - all of the patients were gathered in the day room for visiting hours, and Cassie hadn't had a non-team-related visitor in the eight years she'd been there - but Zack's friends from the Jeffersonian were planning to come and see him in person for the first time in a month, and he'd asked shyly if she would join them for their reunion. She'd said yes, of course, and she had to admit to herself that she was looking forward to getting a better sense of Zack's friends from his former life.

'Former life' - that was what her teammates called the period of their lives before being recruited onto the team. Megan loved to tell stories about her friends and family back in Colorado. By contrast, James never talked about his at all, but when he'd been a patient here he'd been visited several times by some of his fellow hackers.

Cassie had no former life to speak of. Institutionalized at eleven, the only people she would have expected to visit her were her family, and they'd severed ties with her as soon as humanly possible to limit the impact of her so-called sociopathic crime on their reputation. By the time she'd been transferred here at thirteen, anyone else who might have remembered her - friends from school, the girls on her soccer team - had long since moved on. Not that she remembered them all that clearly; everything before age 11 was wrapped up in a pleasant rose-colored haze in the depths of her memory. She'd been normal back then, back when she could touch or be touched without people's thoughts and emotions screaming in her ears.

She wrenched her thoughts off of the path they were beginning to take, knowing that nothing good would come of rehashing her past for the millionth time. She needed to think about happy things instead, like Dr. Carrington's evaluation of Zack's trial period. In the month he'd been with them, he'd solved six cold cases and positively identified two previously unknown murder victims, one of which was a missing CIA agent. Dr. Carrington was delighted with his work and had told him in no uncertain terms that she intended to keep him on the team for as long as he was willing to stay.

Another bright spot for Cassie was how much Zack seemed to enjoy being here. When Dr. Carrington had declared her ready for discharge five years ago, she'd declined, preferring the controlled environment of Pine Hills to any greater freedom she might find in the outside world. She had all the freedom she needed right here; as a resident of the voluntary hospitalization wing, she could leave on a day pass at any time and go anywhere she wanted. Outside of the time she spent working on team cases, she spent most of her time painting, reading, and taking correspondence classes via the internet. Over the years she'd become fluent in four languages, and she faithfully read books and watched TV shows in each of them to maintain her proficiency. Pine Hills was safe, predictable, and offered every amenity she desired. In the outside world, she'd have to spend time interacting with people she didn't know, and she'd also have to cook and clean for herself, which were skills she'd never bothered to learn. She was content staying at Pine Hills, and it was starting to look like Zack might be able to be happy there, too.

_But you don't really want Zack to be trapped here, do you?_

The thought was unwelcome but valid. She had no illusions about the fact that other people saw Pine Hills as a cage, gilded though it might be. She didn't want to lose Zack, but she also didn't want him to be isolated the way she was, to miss out on all the normal human interactions people had on the outside. She cared too much about him to wish for that.

"And I'm back to pointless wallowing," she muttered to herself, picking up her book and resolutely shoving thoughts of the future out of her head. _Sense and Sensibility_ was just what she needed right now.

Fifteen minutes later, one of the orderlies called Zack's name. Cassie stood when he did, returning his entreating look with a smile and joining him as he walked through the door.

"Second conference room on the right, guys," Joe, the orderly, told them. Cassie hesitated, sensing that Joe wasn't finished, and after a moment he flashed her a quick grin. "Glad you've got visitors, Miss Dalton."

Zack opened his mouth, doubtless to correct Joe's faulty assumption that Zack's visitors were here to see Cassie, but she stepped lightly on his foot. It was their secret signal that he was about to say or do something maladroit, agreed upon after he'd expressed frustration with his social awkwardness. He responded admirably, closing his mouth and merely giving Joe a nod before opening the door.

"Zack!" exclaimed several voices at once, and Cassie took a step back to avoid being bumped into as Zack's friends swamped him with hugs. She observed them with both her eyes and her sixth sense, silently assigning names to faces. The happiest one was Angela, an exotic beauty with a warm smile. Cassie made a mental note to stay far away from her; she radiated emotion like a white star, and touching her accidentally would be unpleasant. The rest were easy to identify from Zack's descriptions. She was touched by the overwhelming feelings of love and guilt all of them radiated; clearly, each of them cared deeply for Zack and felt partially responsible for his downfall.

Once they'd all settled into their seats again, Zack, with his signature lack of tact, introduced Cassie with an offhanded, "This is Cassie. She doesn't like to be touched."

Cassie willed herself not to blush. Zack hadn't realized that his comment would discomfit her, but he would definitely pick up on the physiologic signs of embarrassment, and she didn't want him to feel guilty about saying the wrong thing. She'd noticed that was a major source of unhappiness for him - saying the wrong thing at the wrong time and making other people feel bad - and she'd been doing her best to help him make better social judgment calls. Him feeling guilty about embarrassing her would only make things worse.

"Hi, all," Cassie said instead, giving them a little wave and a smile. "Zack talks about you guys all the time. I feel like I know you already."

"We'd love that to be mutual," Hodgins said, and Cassie was amused by the knowing glint in his eyes. "I'm sure Zack could just go on and on about you."

"Actually, if you and Zack don't mind, I'd like to ask you some questions about your relational dynamic," Sweets began eagerly, but stopped short when Booth stomped on his foot.

"Booth!" Brennan protested, and Zack leaned toward Cassie, intrigued.

"Same signal," he pointed out, and Cassie grinned.

"Less gentle," she replied. "And probably not prearranged."

"So, Zack," Angela said slyly, "you and Cassie here have been spending a lot of time together?"

"We're both committed at this facility," Zack explained, his tone matter-of-fact. "I am not permitted to leave the grounds, and Cassie prefers not to, so by default most of our time is spent together."

There was a moment of impressively loud silence. Hodgins' chuckle broke the tension, followed by Booth's.

"Yeah, I could've phrased that better," Angela admitted, snickering at her own inept question. "Sorry, Zack, Cassie."

Cassie waved off the apology with a smile. Zack merely looked puzzled.

"I found nothing intrinsically offensive about your question, Angela," he told her. Hodgins chortled with laughter, clapping Zack on the shoulder.

"That's our Zack."

"You prefer not to leave the facility?" Brennan asked suddenly, looking at Cassie.

"Huh?"

"Bones," Booth muttered, but Brennan wasn't distracted from her line of questioning.

"Zack said that he isn't _permitted_ to leave the grounds, but that you _prefer_ not to. Why do you have a choice?"

"Dr. Brennan -"

"It's okay, Zack." Of all of them, Cassie was the only one who was still smiling. "I don't mind. I'm here voluntarily, Dr. Brennan, so I have a lot of freedom. I just don't choose to use it."

"You're here on purpose?" That was Angela, sounding stunned.

"It is a very nice facility," Sweets offered, although he didn't sound completely convinced. "Lots of, uh, amenities."

"I like it here." Cassie's voice was polite but firm, discouraging any further inquiry. Dr. Brennan, however, was very difficult to discourage.

"What does your family think of your voluntary commitment?" she asked. Behind her, Booth groaned.

"Back off, Bones," he muttered in her ear, and she gave him a puzzled look.

"On the surface, I find Cassie's situation to be anomalous," she informed him. "I'm asking questions to further delineate the causes so that I can comprehend the anomaly."

"Everyone's happier this way, Dr. Brennan," Cassie said, her voice tight. "My family included. I would appreciate it if we could change the subject."

"Zack, did you hear about Jenny from Caribbean Studies?" Angela asked quickly. "Rumor has it she's sleeping with your old girlfriend from Paleontology."

Normally Zack wouldn't have cared about relationship gossip from the Jeffersonian, but even he could see that Angela's question was an attempt to divert the conversation away from Cassie.

"I was unaware that she was inclined toward sexual relationships with persons of the same gender," Zack offered, and Booth snickered.

"Tough luck, kid. You turned her into a switch hitter," he cracked. Angela rolled her eyes. Zack and Brennan both stared at Booth in confusion.

"What does football have to do with anything?" Brennan asked.

"Baseball, Bones. Baseball. It was a joke. See, because Naomi dated Zack and now…" At her continuing blank stare, he shook his head in resignation. "Forget it. Just forget it. It wasn't that funny anyway."

Angela launched into a long-winded account of Jenny-from-Caribbean-Studies' rumored relationships, which apparently included her boss and several of the graduate assistants from Egyptology, male and female. After a few minutes, Hodgins interrupted with a lewd remark, which led to a long discussion among the whole group about whether men should find lesbian encounters arousing. It lasted for almost half an hour, and Brennan was in the middle of a scientific tirade whose only point seemed to be insulting Booth's masculinity when a knock at the door interrupted them.

The orderly stuck his head into the room, looking apologetic.

"Sorry to interrupt, folks. Miss Dalton, Dr. Carrington is looking for you."

Cassie gave the group a quick wave and ducked out of the room. Once she was gone, Angela addressed all of them, hands on her hips.

"Look what you guys did! You scared her away!"

"No," Zack said slowly, not certain why Angela would think that. "She was called away by the orderly. He was just here."

"That's not what she means, Zack," Booth replied, raising his eyebrows at his partner. "And some of us did more scaring than others."

"Why are you looking at me?" Brennan demanded, immediately defensive. "I didn't do anything scary!"

"You kept pushing the subject, sweetie," Angela explained. "Even though Cassie clearly didn't want to talk about her situation, you kept asking questions."

"But that's what I always do."

"When we're interviewing suspects, Bones," Booth pointed out. "Cassie? Not a suspect."

"So come on, Zack," Hodgins said impatiently. "What's going on with you and Cassie? She totally wants you!"

"Wants me for what?"

"You know, _wants_ you!" Hodgins told him, rolling his eyes at his friend's obtuseness.

"Hodgins believes she desires to have sexual intercourse with you," Brennan offered helpfully, and Booth choked on a laugh.

"Very subtle there, Bones."

"Cassie hasn't asked me to have intercourse with her," Zack said. Angela frowned as though something had just occurred to her.

"Wait, is that even allowed here? I mean, aren't there rules about that sort of thing?"

"I don't know." Zack looked thoughtful. "I could ask Dr. Carrington."

"In my professional opinion, I'd recommend against it," Sweets said. "It might engender suspicion about your intended behavior here."

"Do they have video cameras in the bedrooms?" Angela sounded intrigued rather than bothered. "Because that might be kind of hot. I wonder if the security guys just sit around and watch -"

"Okay, now I'm the one who wants the subject changed," Booth said firmly. "That's really kind of creepy."

"I second the request," Zack agreed. "I'm uncomfortable with the current subject matter."

The conversation drifted back to gossip from the Jeffersonian. Zack looked around at his friends as they chatted, feeling an odd mixture of emotions. He was happy that they'd come to visit him, and the familiar feeling of regret for his current situation was still there, but there was a new dynamic in place that he couldn't quite comprehend. Cassie would have known exactly what was bothering him, but she wasn't here to ask. If he'd been forced to guess - and he hated to guess, but Dr. Carrington was encouraging him to try - he'd say that it was possible he'd gotten so used to having Cassie understand exactly what he was thinking and how he was feeling simply by touching him that he was now frustrated with his friends' inability to do the same. The resultant confusion, which used to be an invariable constant in his life, had become surprisingly irritating to him, and during the conversation he found himself wishing several times that his friends could understand him the way she did.


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: Not mine.

A/N: Thank you to all of my reviewers! You make my day! :)

* * *

_Four Months Later_

Temperance Brennan leaned forward, stretching her lower back until she felt a satisfying pop.

"You okay, sweetie?" Angela asked from the other side of the platform, and Brennan nodded.

"Standing over the examination table for longer than three hours has a tendency to irritate my lumbar region," she replied absently, staring down at the remains and missing Angela's indulgent smile. "You know, Booth may be right."

Angela waited several moments. When it became apparent that Brennan's mind had already moved, light-speed, past whatever it was she'd been thinking, she prompted, "Right about what?"

Brennan looked up, startled. "Oh. He may be right that these murders were all committed by the same person. See, look here." She pulled up magnified views of the two skulls from their last two cases and compared them with the newest one. "See these indentations here on the frontal bone?"

"They look identical," Angela offered, and Brennan nodded.

"The size and depth of these small indentations match exactly among the three skulls."

"What would cause that?"

Brennan shrugged. "Being hit on the forehead with a solid object of this pattern?"

The beep of the card reader warned them that they had company, and a moment later Hodgins joined the conversation.

"I found particulates in the first skull suggesting that the object used to make those indentations is made of platinum."

"Platinum?" Angela sounded impressed. "So our killer is a big spender."

"Jewelry? A ring, maybe?" Hodgins guessed. Brennan shook her head.

"The angle and depth of injury suggests a narrow implement approximately 25 to 35 centimeters long."

"Like what?" Angela asked, and Brennan sighed again, frustrated.

"I have no idea. I've never seen this particular pattern of injury before."

"I can run some scenarios," Angela offered. "See if I can come up with a possible murder weapon."

"No."

They all turned to see Booth standing at the bottom of the steps, his expression grim.

"Booth -" Brennan began, but he shook his head.

"Nobody's going anywhere. Family meeting in Bones' office, right now."

* * *

They gathered in Brennan's office, Angela stopping long enough to grab Cam and Sweets from the autopsy room. By silent consensus, the interns were excluded; Booth had said this was a 'family meeting', and none of the interns had been completely welcomed into the fold yet, despite the fact that Zack had been gone for nearly a year now.

Booth was pacing the length of Brennan's office, a file folder held tightly in his right hand. He looked up when Angela, Cam, and Sweets entered, inclining his head in a gesture for them to sit.

"What's wrong, Booth?" Brennan asked, concerned by her partner's clear agitation. "Did you find a link between the victims?"

He'd been convinced for nearly two weeks that the three bodies they'd found had been killed by the same perpetrator: same MO, same cause of death, all had been sexually assaulted peri-mortem, and the bodies had been dumped within a three-mile radius of each other. Now, with Brennan's confirmation that they'd all been killed with the same weapon, it looked like he'd been right.

The most frustrating part of the case for Booth had been that there was no link between the victims. They lived several states apart, shared none of the same work or interests, and there was no evidence that they knew anyone in common between even two of them, let alone all three. Apart from the fact that all three were women, there was nothing to suggest why the killer had chosen them.

"Yeah, I did," he said grimly. "And you're not going to like it."

Brennan's wordless expression of curiosity prompted him to continue. The others waited, knowing Booth wouldn't have interrupted their work and called them together without a good reason.

"There was no obvious connection between the victims, so I looked deeper. I ended up finding sealed court records on all three, dating back to their early teens."

"They were juvenile delinquents?" Cam guessed. Booth shook his head, pulling three photos out of the folder and laying them down side by side on Brennan's desk. They were generic photos of three teenage girls, and Angela could tell from the facial structures that these were their victims at a younger age.

"They all testified against the same man." He produced another picture, this one of a smiling, handsome man in his early 40s. "He was a piano teacher, and he molested all three of our victims when they were children."

Angela groaned. She hated cases involving child molestation.

"It gets worse," Booth sighed, tapping the folder against Brennan's desk. "They came forward two years after the guy, Bill Fairchild, was murdered."

"I don't see how that's worse," Brennan replied, and Sweets nodded in agreement.

"He was a child molester. Whoever killed him did society a favor," Sweets said, ignoring the intrigued look Cam shot him. He wasn't going to discuss his own personal aversion to child molesters, but he also wasn't going to pretend he was sorry this guy was dead.

"Why would they testify after the perpetrator was already dead?" That was Hodgins, sounding puzzled. "Isn't that kind of like shutting the barn door after the horse is long gone?"

"Because," Booth said heavily, pulling another picture out of the folder, "the person who killed Fairchild? She was an eleven year old girl."

He set that picture down next to the others. The group gathered around him to look. Predictably, Angela was the first one to put the pieces together.

"Oh, my God," she breathed, recognizing the little girl's facial structure. "That's Cassie."

"Zack's Cassie?" Brennan asked, taking a closer look at the picture, and Booth nodded.

"Cassandra Aldridge, age eleven," Booth told them. "When they arrested her, she stopped talking completely; didn't say a word the whole time she was in custody. She never confessed, and she never told the prosecutors why she killed him. The State couldn't try her for the murder - according to the prosecutor's report, she was 'clearly unbalanced' - and she was committed to the juvenile ward at McKinley. Two years in, she was transferred to Pine Hills. Shortly after that, our three victims came forward and admitted to being molested by Fairchild."

"But Cassie's last name is Dalton," Angela protested, even as Hodgins swore aloud.

"Dr. Hodgins?" Cam asked, and he shook his head in disbelief.

"I knew about this," he said, stunned. "I mean, I knew about it when it happened. I went to school with George Aldridge. One day he didn't show up, and the next day it's all over the campus that his baby sister snapped and killed some guy." He shook his head again. "George's father was the CEO of the Aldridge Corporation. You know, John Aldridge? The real estate mogul? Rumor had it he disowned the girl faster than you can say 'plausible deniability'."

"Probably why she has a different last name," Brennan offered. "If her family didn't want her associated with them in any way, they could have had her name legally changed."

"Poor Cassie," Angela whispered, near tears. "Can you imagine? She went through that and then her family just turned their backs on her? What kind of monsters could do that to a little girl?"

"Reputation was very important to the Aldridges," Hodgins said, and there was a definite undertone of scorn in his voice. "After George left school, I heard his mother moved to Europe. She couldn't handle being kicked out of the country club."

"There's a point here that I think you're missing," Booth told them, holding up Cassie's picture again. "Somebody killed all three of those girls, and the only thing that links them is Fairchild. The only person left who was involved in the situation is her."

"You think the killer will go after Cassie?"

"I think she needs to be warned."


	7. Chapter 7

Disclaimer: Still not mine.

A/N: I know the last chapter was a fairly abrupt jump; I needed a new plot point to work with. I'll fill in the backstory over the next few chapters. Thank you to all the reviewers!

* * *

Zack was sprawled across the hammock on the back porch at Pine Hills, watching Cassie tune her guitar. She wasn't an expert musician, and her singing voice was solidly average, but she was a fairly accomplished amateur on the guitar and he enjoyed singing along when she played. Right now, though, she was tuning the instrument to within an inch of its life, matching one string's sound to the next as though the fate of the world depended on it. He thought she was probably using it as an outlet for stress.

They'd had a rough few days, trying to determine who and what had killed a missing CIA agent. Now that the case was closed, Cassie had declared today to be an official day off for both of them, and Zack hadn't argued. He'd never had a hammock before, and he found the gentle rocking motion strangely soothing. He was rocking now, slowly, one foot pushing lazily against the railing to maintain the motion.

"Angela said she'd come by later today," he said casually, enjoying the smile Cassie gave him at that news.

"Really?" She sounded delighted. He hadn't known how much Cassie would like Angela once she got to know her, but in retrospect he should have. They shared a common love of art and similar optimistic outlooks on life. "I've got an idea for a new piece I want to run by her."

"Painting?"

"Jewelry," she said, her fingers strumming absently at the guitar strings. It was in perfect tune now, Zack realized. "She keeps insisting that I should explore other mediums. I've never made jewelry before, but she says it's not that hard."

"You have excellent manual dexterity," Zack informed her. "I'm certain the exercise will not cause you any significant difficulty."

"Thank you," she replied, charmed by his offhand compliment. Her eyes were drawn to his hands, currently folded over his chest, and she felt a now-familiar pang of anger at the angry red scars that laced his fingers. The plastic surgeon and orthopedist had jointly decided that the healing process was well underway and nothing further could be done for his hands, and they'd given him the okay to take off the gloves and bandages. She'd prepared herself for the sight of his bare hands, but the injustice of it still hit her every time she saw them.

He'd told her that by his estimation he'd regained nearly 75 percent of function, his right hand significantly better than his left, and he'd seemed happy with that. It made her angry. She was furious with the Army, with the Master, with everyone and everything that had a part in how the situation had played out. Zack was a truly good person, one of the only ones she'd ever met, and the path his life had taken was proof positive that there really wasn't any justice in the universe.

Dr. Carrington felt that Cassie's anger on Zack's behalf was healthy, and that she was transferring some of her repressed anger at her own situation into her feelings for Zack. Regardless of the psychobabble, it was the first time in a very long while that Cassie had felt truly _angry_, and being told that she was right in her convictions felt good.

She was also angry with Zack's friends. She knew he wouldn't understand that, but she felt it was completely valid. They clearly loved and respected Zack, and she just didn't get how they could so readily believe that he'd murdered someone. He was so obviously not a killer - _anyone_ could see that - and yet the people who loved him most had been quick to believe the worst of him. Zack had told her that they hadn't even investigated the lobbyist's death, since he'd confessed. That frustrated her; for people so concerned with evidence and hard science, they were shockingly willing to condemn Zack without anything but his word as proof.

Zack was speaking, and she shook her head to clear it, giving him an apologetic look.

"Sorry, what? My mind was wandering."

"I said, are you going to play something?" He closed his eyes, basking in the sun. "I'd like it if you played."

"Want to sing?" she offered, but he made a declining murmur.

"I'd rather just listen."

She shrugged, settling the guitar into position and playing the opening chord of an old Sister Hazel song.

"I like this one," Zack told her, and she smiled.

"I know."

They sat like that for a while, Cassie playing whatever song came to mind and Zack drifting, half-asleep, in the hammock. The peaceful scene was interrupted when Cassie's fingers slipped abruptly off the frets, the guitar protesting with a sour chord that startled Zack out of his sleepy daze.

"Cassie -"

"Something's wrong." She set the guitar down as he sat up in the hammock, looking around for whatever danger Cassie had sensed. "Something bad -"

The door to the back porch opened, and Agent Booth stepped out, Dr. Brennan on his heels.

"What's wrong?"

Zack asked the question, but Cassie seemed frozen, staring straight ahead with her fingers clenched into fists. He took a moment to consider what a bad time this was for her to go into a trance, and then suddenly she was back, blinking up at Booth and Brennan.

"It's me," she said quietly, looking over at Zack. "They're here about me."


	8. Chapter 8

Disclaimer: Still not mine.

A/N: Thanks again to the reviewers. I know I've said it already, but you all really make the world a better place!

* * *

They sat around the iron-wrought table on the back porch. Cassie had sent a nearby orderly to find Dr. Carrington, only to be told that she'd left the building for a meeting and wouldn't be back for several hours. Zack knew she'd considered calling Dr. Carrington's cell phone, but that would run the risk of blowing their cover to the orderly and to Booth and Brennan, since most patients couldn't just call up their psychologists on their personal phones and demand their presence. Instead, she'd suggested that they all sit down at the table and talk. She'd offered to let Zack leave, since the situation wasn't really his problem, but he'd flatly declined. She was his partner. If he'd learned anything from watching Booth and Brennan together, it was that partners backed each other up. Besides, if Dr. Carrington heard he'd left her alone to be questioned by Booth and Brennan, she very well might have him killed.

Now Cassie sat beside him, her knees tucked up under her chin and her arms around her legs as she regarded Booth and Brennan from across the table.

"Nobody's asked me about Bill Fairchild in years," she told them quietly. "What brings this up now, after all this time?"

Booth and Brennan exchanged a look. Hesitantly, Brennan told her about the three deceased women who'd been identified as Fairchild's victims from nearly twelve years ago. She barely blinked at the first two names, but drew in a sharp breath at the third.

"Cassie?" Zack murmured, and she turned toward him, her eyes brimming with tears.

"Laurie Martin was my friend," she said, hugging her legs tighter against her body as he watched, helpless to soothe her pain. "We were on the same soccer team, before…" She sighed. "She wrote to me a few times, after I came here. She even called once, right before she left for college. She was the only one who stayed in touch."

"Someone killed all three of them, Cassie," Booth said, as gently as he could. "This was the only thing we could find that they all had in common."

"I hope you find whoever killed them." Her voice had hardened, taking on a steely edge Zack had never heard before. "I hope you make him pay."

"We're actually worried that he might find you," Booth admitted. "You're the only person connected to it who's still alive. You should be protected until we catch whoever killed them."

Cassie choked on a desperate laugh. "Protected? What, like in a safe house somewhere? Look _around_, Agent Booth. This is a secure facility. No one can get in here without being vetted by Security. There are surveillance cameras all over the grounds and giant perimeter walls topped with electric current. Pine Hills is as safe as it gets."

Booth hesitated, looking over at Brennan, who gave a small shrug.

"It does sound extremely secure," she offered, and her partner sighed.

"Listen, Cassie, we just want to make sure nothing happens to you, okay?"

Cassie nodded. "Do what you like, Agent Booth," she told him tiredly. "Post agents at the doors, lock me in my room. Whatever you want. But I'm staying here."

Zack gave Booth an entreating look, and Booth gave him a reassuring nod. He'd do everything he could to keep the kid's girlfriend safe.

They were quiet for a long moment. Booth was making plans for how best to protect the facility, and Cassie was looking out toward the lake, a frown tugging at her lips. Zack was watching Dr. Brennan, who was staring at Cassie as though the younger woman held the answer to a particularly complex problem. He was about to break the silence and ask Dr. Brennan a question, before she could ask Cassie something that in all probability would either upset or offend her, but Brennan beat him to it.

"Cassie?" Brennan asked, sounding curious. The only response she got was an indistinguishable murmur, but she took that as permission to continue. "Can I ask you a question?"

Cassie waved her hand in a vague 'go ahead' gesture, her gaze still fixed on something off in the distance.

"You didn't talk for nearly three years after you -" Booth kicked her shin under the table and she gave him an affronted look, changing her question to make it as inoffensive as she could. "After Fairchild died. Why?"

Cassie shrugged, finally meeting Brennan's eyes, and even Brennan could see the raw pain there.

"There was no point in talking if nobody was going to listen."

Zack surprised both Brennan and Booth then, reaching out to clasp Cassie's small hand in his heavily scarred one. She turned toward him, questioning, and was reassured by his earnest expression.

"I'm listening," he told her. Her smile was a little wobbly, and her eyes were wet with tears again, but her grip on his hand was steady and her voice was strong when she replied.

"I know you are."

* * *

Zack sat on Cassie's bed, watching her brush out her long hair with ruthless efficiency. He knew she was upset - she'd been prowling around her room for nearly half an hour, performing all the necessary little tasks of bedtime with unnecessary force - but he still winced whenever the hairbrush caught on a tangle and yanked at her scalp.

"Cassie," he called finally, when he was certain she had to be developing an intense headache. She spun, startled by the interruption, and met Zack's level gaze for several moments before dropping her eyes.

With a sigh, she came over to join him, plopping down on the bed and wordlessly handing him the hairbrush. He turned her gently around so that her back was to him and slid his fingers into her hair, pulling far more carefully at the knots than she had. The hairbrush presented something of a challenge, since he still had difficulty gripping narrow objects. After several moments of contemplation, he managed a hold on the brush that was effective, albeit awkward.

She stayed silent as he brushed her hair, and after a few minutes he could feel her starting to relax, losing the muscle tension that had been present since Booth and Brennan had arrived that afternoon. After they'd left, Dr. Carrington had arrived, and _that_ conversation certainly hadn't done anything to reduce the amount of stress on either one of them. The end result had been both Cassie and Zack being confined to the hallway where their rooms were located. Carrington had restricted them from the lab on the grounds that, while it was an exceptionally secure room, Cassie needed to be immediately available should Booth or any of his agents come looking for her. Zack had stated firmly that he would stay with Cassie until the situation was resolved, and neither woman had argued with him, so he'd taken their acceptance as implicit.

He'd finished combing out the tangles and was now just running his fingers through her hair for the sheer tactile pleasure of it, despite the fact that the sensory input from his hands was somewhat hampered by nerve damage.

"I used to be normal," Cassie said suddenly, startling him as she broke the silence. He continued to stroke her hair, knowing from nearly six months with her that she was more likely to speak her mind if he didn't interrupt.

"I used to be normal," she said again, her voice lower this time, laden with…anger? Sadness? He was getting better at reading people's emotional states, between Dr. Carrington's lessons and simply being around Cassie, but not being able to see her face made it more difficult. "And then he came along. Fairchild."

She paused, taking a deep breath, and then shifted on the bed until she faced Zack.

"I was a normal kid. Moody, sometimes, I guess, but there was nothing different about me. I could touch things, touch people, and nothing happened. And then he touched me."

Zack felt his chest tighten, his pharynx constrict, and finally understood the colloquialism about a person having a lump in their throat in times of emotional distress. He was fairly certain there was no actual lump in his throat, and yet he found it difficult to swallow. He wasn't sure whether he wanted to cry or hit something. Or both.

"My mother signed me up for piano lessons. He was the best instructor in the city, so of course I had to take lessons from him. When I showed up to his house after school, he was the only one there. He took my backpack and my coat, and he told me to sit on the piano bench. He put his hand on my shoulder -"

Her voice faltered, and he reached out to brush away the tears that slipped down her cheeks.

"He touched my shoulder," she repeated, clearly determined to finish the story, "and I saw what he'd done. I saw all the girls he'd hurt, what he'd done to them. It was just _there_, in my head, like I was right there watching it. I saw Laurie - my friend Laurie, who never did anything to anybody - I saw what he'd done to her. I just - I snapped."

Now she was looking up at him, something raw and desperate in her expression. "There was a metronome on the piano. It was big and heavy, and I picked it up and hit him with it. I hit him over and over, and I wasn't seeing him, I was seeing what he'd done to those girls, to my friend, and I had to _stop _him, I couldn't let him do that to anyone else -"

Zack couldn't take it anymore. He pulled her into his arms, her head against his chest as he held her tightly, and murmured helpless apologies as her tears soaked into his shirt. He was acutely aware of his lack of social skills - he didn't know what to say to comfort her, or even if anything he could say would make a difference. In the absence of any firm behavioral guidelines, he did as Dr. Carrington had previously instructed him and treated Cassie the way he would want to be treated if their roles were reversed.

Despite his inexperience in this particular arena, his actions seemed to help. Cassie's sobs decreased in both frequency and intensity, and after a period of time that was far too long for his comfort but was, in all likelihood, no more than several minutes, she had calmed down and was simply resting in his arms. After a few more moments of quiet, Cassie tilted her head up to look at him. She gave him a weak smile, reaching up to brush her hand against his cheek, and he was surprised to realize there were tears on his face.

"Aren't we a pair," Cassie sighed, wiping ineffectually at her own tear-streaked cheeks. "Zack, would you…would you stay here? Just for tonight?" She looked down at her hands. "I don't want to be alone."

He leaned forward to kiss the top of her head, her hair soft against his lips, and wondered why she sounded unsure of his response. After all of this, how could he leave her?

"I don't want you to be alone," he replied. She looked up at him again, and he was caught completely by surprise when she kissed him.

The kiss was nice. Nice was actually something of an understatement, but for all of his expansive vocabulary, Zack couldn't find the right words to describe it. For now, he was willing to stick with nice. Very nice. Extremely nice. And over too soon, but even he knew that trying to further his physical relationship with Cassie after the emotional trauma she'd just re-experienced was ill-advised.

She curled up on the bed then, her back to him. He pulled the blanket over them both, wrapping his arms around her and resting his head on the pillow next to hers. His left hand rested just over her heart, and he found its soft rhythm reassuring.

"Good night, Zack," she whispered. He pressed another kiss to the back of her head, feeling her relax against him, and he closed his eyes.

"Good night, Cassie."


	9. Chapter 9

Disclaimer: Again, still not mine.

* * *

Zack woke slowly, like he always did when he didn't have somewhere he needed to be. It was one of the perks of being institutionalized; no one cared when he got up in the morning.

He rolled over, stretching lazily, and froze. Cassie was sprawled next to him, fast asleep, her golden hair spread out around her head. In the light from the east-facing window, he realized, it was reminiscent of a halo. When he reached out to brush it away from her face, she blinked up at him and he realized he'd woken her up.

"You resemble a 17th century Baroque painting of a Pietistic saint."

"Hmm." Cassie looked puzzled. He was about to try and explain the reference when she tilted her head to the side, touching her cheek to his fingers. "Oh. Thanks, Zack. That's sweet."

There were definite advantages to having a partner with psychic abilities.

"You kissed me last night," he said, bringing it up before he lost the courage to mention it. Cassie sat up, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips.

"I remember." She reached for his hand and hesitated, her fingers hovering over his as she looked up at him. "Was that okay? Me kissing you?"

"It was extremely nice," he assured her. "Despite my limited experience with your kissing technique, I'm comfortable extrapolating that it's probably above average."

She choked on a laugh. "Good to know, since I haven't actually done it before." At his startled look, she added, "Locked up at eleven, remember? Psychic backlash from touching people?"

"I remember," he said, irritated with himself for being surprised by what should have been an obvious conclusion. Cassie, for all that she was far better socially adjusted than he was, had been forced to lead a physically solitary existence for a significant portion of her life. It was easy to forget sometimes.

"That wasn't actually what I was asking, though," she continued hesitantly. "What I meant was, are you okay with me kissing you?"

"Oh. Yes. I find it to be both an acceptable and enjoyable action."

She giggled, lacing her fingers through his.

"Would it be okay if I did it again?"

Zack was by no means an expert in subtext, but the question paired with the look she was giving him made her intent clear to him. Still, he couldn't be certain, so he leaned in toward her and hesitated just before his lips would have touched hers. He was relieved when she closed the distance between them, proving his deduction correct as they kissed. And kissed. And kissed.

By the time she pulled away, they were both breathless, and Zack's mouth was tingling in an agreeable way.

"I could do that all day," Cassie murmured, running her fingers through his hair. He nodded in agreement.

"That's actually true," he pointed out. "Since neither of us can currently enter the work area, we have no other commitments to fulfill." He paused, then added, "I would enjoy it."

"Then it's settled," she declared, sliding her arms behind his head and sealing her mouth to his.

Zack was empirically familiar with all of the metaphors used to describe situations like this one: 'there were fireworks', 'time stopped', 'the earth moved'. He'd never understood the rationale behind them, and this particular situation only served to strengthen his belief that those phrases were both fundamentally inaccurate and lacking in descriptive qualities. As he kissed Cassie, running his thumb along the line of her jaw, he decided that this experience was simply adding new dimensions to the definitions of words he already knew. _Soft_, for him, became her hair, falling around their faces like a curtain that shielded them from the rest of the world. _Tender_ was her fingers stroking his palm, caressing the scars that covered his hands. _Warm_ was her body, pressed tightly to his, eliciting feelings of both arousal and security.

It was better than any metaphor.

* * *

"Hey, sweetie?"

Brennan looked up from her computer to find Angela standing in front of her desk.

"Hi, Ange. What do you need?"

"A place to hide," Angela moaned, flopping melodramatically onto Brennan's couch. "This has been such a miserable day. Cam's in a bad mood, Hodgins was in a bad mood before he took off saying he had 'an important errand' to run, and I have a million things to get done today."

"Then wouldn't it be more practical for you to reduce your workload by completing some of it instead of hiding from it?" Brennan asked, puzzled, and Angela rolled her eyes.

"Thanks for the advice, Bren, but I'm going to hang out here for a few minutes first. De-stress, you know?"

Brennan wasn't sure she did know, but Angela was an adult and if she felt that she needed a break before she could return to work, Brennan wasn't going to stop her.

Angela was sprawled across her friend's couch, eyes closed, when she felt the pocket of her lab coat vibrating. She frowned as she pulled out her phone, which was displaying that the caller was unknown. If it was another telemarketer ignoring the 'don't call' list, she was going to hurt someone.

"Hello?"

"Angela?"

She sat up straight on the couch. "Zack?"

"It's Zack?" Brennan asked from across the room, setting down the file she'd been reading. "How is he? Is everything okay?"

"Zack, they let you call?" Angela asked, waving Brennan off. "Did something happen?"

"I have unrestricted phone privileges. As for your second question, you'll have to be more specific."

Angela resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "Is Cassie okay?"

"I believe so." She could hear the concern in his voice. "There's no reason for her not to be, is there? We were just kissing. Well, perhaps we engaged in a disproportionate amount of kissing, but I don't think it could actually cause her harm."

"Whoa, hey, hold the phone!" Angela exclaimed, practically bouncing in her seat with excitement that wasn't dulled even by Zack's immediate response that he _was_, in fact, holding the phone. "You kissed Cassie?"

Brennan had joined her on the couch. They traded looks, Brennan's startled and Angela's gleeful.

"Technically, she kissed me. The first time, anyway."

"The first time, huh? How many times did you kiss?"

"I lost count after one hundred twenty-seven."

Angela was fervently glad she wasn't drinking soda, because at that moment she would have snorted it out of her nose. Brennan stared at her, puzzled, as she dissolved into helpless laughter.

"Angela?"

"Sorry," she gasped, trying to stop laughing long enough to answer Zack. "I'm here. Sorry."

"Angela, I need advice."

"Uh-huh." She grinned at Brennan, leaning back against the couch and buffing her nails playfully on her shirt. "When they need advice on the ladies, they all come to me. What do you need to know, Zack-o?"

"I've never engaged in a sexual relationship with a woman who has no previous experience with physical intimacy. I need to know what methods and techniques would be best to use in this situation."

Angela's smile slipped. "Uh, Zack? Can you hang on for a second?"

Without waiting for a response, she tilted the phone away from her mouth and sighed heavily. She just couldn't catch a break today.

"Ange?" That was Brennan, sounding irritated at being left out of the conversation. "What's going on?"

She covered the mouthpiece of the phone with her hand. "Zack wants advice on sex techniques. Why is all of this happening to me today?"

"I can help!" Brennan volunteered eagerly. Angela gaped at her and Brennan frowned, defensive. "What? While I may not have the breadth of sexual experience that you do, I have engaged in enough sexual activity to feel comfortable giving advice on technique."

"You _want_ to give Zack sex pointers?"

"You're not the only one who can be helpful in that particular arena," Brennan insisted. Angela heard the deeper meaning in Brenna's tone - _Why didn't Zack call _me _for advice?_ - and decided not to let a golden opportunity get away.

"He's all yours, sweetie," Angela told her, handing the phone to Brennan and heading for the door. She hesitated in the doorway, listening as Brennan launched into a highly technical lecture on female anatomy and methods of arousal. After a few moments, she shook her head, regretting that they'd all missed this solution back when Zack had been asking for advice about Naomi. If she, Booth, or Hodgins had just realized that neither Brennan nor Zack would see anything embarrassing or inappropriate about him asking her for sex advice, they all could have avoided some discomfort.

* * *

Jack Hodgins stood at the bottom of the imposing staircase leading up to the Aldridge mansion. The house was impressive even by his standards, and his Mini Cooper seemed out of place parked behind the Bentley sitting in the circular driveway. That wasn't unusual; he'd grown up feeling out of place in places just like this one.

The very upright butler showed him into the downstairs drawing room. His wordless air of disapproval at Jack's workaday appearance changed to an air of interest when he gave his name and the butler realized he was one of _those _Hodgins. He excused himself to go and find 'Master Aldridge'. Jack crossed over to the bar and poured himself a scotch while he waited. He had a feeling he wasn't really going to enjoy this visit.

After several minutes of sipping the Aldridges' exquisite and doubtless ludicrously expensive scotch, he heard footsteps outside the door. He turned to face it as George Aldridge stepped into the room. George was as tall, blond, and handsome as he had been when they were teenagers, and Jack found himself recalling all the reasons he'd hated the other man.

"My God, it _is_ Jack Hodgins," George caroled, with joy that Jack was certain was feigned. Nevertheless, he shook the man's hand. "I haven't seen you in years, Jack! How have you been?"

"Oh, I can't complain," Jack replied. "You're clearly doing all right," he added, making a vague gesture that encompassed the elegant furnishings of the drawing room.

George chuckled as he poured himself a glass of the same scotch Jack was drinking. "Yes, I suppose I can't complain either," he said. "When my father passed, God rest him, he left controlling interest in the corporation to me. I've done fairly well for myself since then, if I do say so."

They stood in silence for a moment. Jack took one final swig of scotch and set the glass down firmly on the coffee table.

"I'm here about your sister."

George sipped genteelly at his scotch. "You never were one for pleasant small talk, Jack."

"And you never were one for looking out for anybody but yourself," Jack snapped. "Why is she still in Pine Hills?"

"Why do you care?" George asked, sounding curious. "You didn't know her. What's she done to bring you here asking about her?"

"Cassie hasn't done anything, George. That's the point! She's been locked up in a mental hospital for _years_, and all she ever did was defend herself!"

"She destroyed our lives."

George and Jack both turned at the sound of a third voice. There was a younger man standing in the doorway. Jack didn't know him, but from his appearance he was probably related to George and Cassie, and his comment made it likely that he was Ethan Aldridge, the youngest of the three siblings.

"Ethan, please," George protested, confirming Jack's suspicions. Ethan refused to be quiet, turning to face Jack squarely.

"After that crazy bitch murdered that man, our lives went straight to hell," Ethan said, his voice hard and cold. "Our mother moved to Europe because she couldn't stand the shame. Our father died of a heart attack three years later, brought on by stress. George and I were shunned by our friends, our acquaintances. Even our cousins wanted nothing to do with us. They didn't want the stain of association with her to rub off on them."

"She was just a kid," Jack protested, stunned by Ethan's vitriol. "She was a kid, and it was over a decade ago, man. Get a grip. I can assure you that Cassie went through a hell of a lot more than you did."

"I don't care about your _assurances_," Ethan said sharply. "And we don't use that name in this house. She's not one of us anymore."

He'd been right earlier, Jack realized. This wasn't a visit he was going to enjoy.

"You're an ass," he told Ethan, ignoring the younger man's sneer. "And you, George? You were always an ass, but I have to tell you, I never would have expected something this low from you. You failed her, George. You're her big brother and you failed her, and I don't know how you live with yourself."

He stormed out the way he'd come in, nearly running over the butler in his haste to get out of the house. He'd figured it was worth a try, getting George to see reason, maybe getting him thinking about reconciling with Cassie. He should have known it was hopeless. George Aldridge was the same pompous jerk he'd always been, and it looked like his little brother was growing up just like him. Maybe Cassie had been lucky, in some twisted way, to get out of that house before she could become one of them.


	10. Chapter 10

A/N: This is for everyone who kept reviewing and encouraging me to come back to finish this, despite my very long hiatus. I really appreciate you sticking with the story! There will be at least two more chapters, and there is (and always was) a vague plan for a sequel in the future.

* * *

"Come in!"

Zack stepped into Cassie's room. She smiled at him and gestured for him to close the door. He obeyed, looking over at her, and she motioned back at the door. He returned his attention to it and realized it had a sliding bolt lock. He was fairly certain the lock hadn't been there the day before, so perhaps Cassie _was_ taking the threat to her safety more seriously than Agent Booth believed she was.

"Lock it and get over here," Cassie whispered urgently when he hesitated. "I have something for you."

Zack locked the door, his mind whirling. Dr. Brennan had, among other things, discussed with him the multivariate ways in which one's partner might broach the subject of engaging in sexual activity. One of them had been vague references to 'having something for you'. Cassie's instruction to lock the door lent additional credence to that theory.

He mentally rehearsed several of the comments Dr. Brennan had suggested for a situation like this one. His personal preference was to compliment her eyes - 'flattering but not overtly sexual', Dr. Brennan had told him - and the words were on his lips as he turned to face her. He froze when he saw what she held in her hands.

It was a gun.

It was a _modified_ gun, he realized, once the shock of seeing Cassie holding a firearm had passed. From years of working on FBI cases at the Jeffersonian, he was comfortable assessing it as a .45 caliber revolver. The entire trigger apparatus had been modified to accommodate an unusually large hand, or possibly a two-handed grip for a user with limited manual dexterity or strength.

"Should you have that?" he asked finally, and she laughed.

"Technically, no," she allowed with a smile. "It's yours."

"Mine?"

Cassie nodded, releasing the catch and spinning the chamber out to show him it currently housed six bullets.

"Armor-piercing rounds," she identified for him, snapping the chamber back into place with an easy grace that suggested to him this wasn't the first time she'd handled a gun. "If you end up in a situation where you have to shoot, it'll probably be bad enough that you'll need them. I carry them, too."

"_You_ carry them."

His mother had always accused him of having no imagination. He was suddenly willing to concede the point: he flat-out couldn't imagine slight, fragile Cassie shooting armor-piercing bullets at anyone.

"It's a dangerous world out there," she said, handing him the gun. He took it gingerly, as though it was a volatile chemical sample, and Cassie huffed; with impatience or amusement, he couldn't tell.

"It's been specially modified for you. You shouldn't have any trouble firing it even though your hands aren't back up to full function."

He was about to protest when he noticed the necklace Cassie was wearing.

"I've never seen that before." Zack transferred the gun to his left hand and reached out with his right, touching the charm that hung on a black cord around her neck. Cassie rarely wore jewelry, although he knew she intended to start crafting it under Angela's tutelage. "It's black onyx."

"Yes," Cassie agreed, guarded.

"It is believed by several different cultures to have supernatural powers of protection from evil."

Cassie fingered the charm uneasily. "Every little bit helps." At his curious look, she sighed, then added, "Something is coming, Zack. I'm not sure what it is, but I'm worried."

"Could it be related to the killer that Booth and Brennan are trying to catch?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. It's something bad."

"Something like what?"

"I don't _know_!" She thumped her fist against her leg, frustrated. "I do psychometry, not precognition! I've never had visions of the future. I just have this _feeling_…"

Zack looked down at the .45 in his hand. "Would it help your feeling if I carried this gun?"

"Yes." There was no hesitation in her response, but her gaze seemed sympathetic. "But I know you don't want to, Zack."

He weighed his innate dislike for weapons and violence against his concern for Cassie's emotional state and found the conclusion simple.

"Does it have a holster?"

* * *

Cassie set down the book she'd been struggling to concentrate on, irritated with herself for selecting it in the first place._ The Myth of Sisyphus _was a difficult read even on days when she felt like delving into philosophy, and today it was making her eyes glaze over. She would have been better off sitting on the other side of the day room to watch mindless game shows with some of the other patients.

Zack was engrossed in the book he'd chosen. She leaned over far enough to see part of the title - _Complex Mathematical Theorems in_ - and didn't bother to try and read the rest. If her own book hadn't put her to sleep, his could have finished her off in no time.

She sighed, curling up in her chair and leaning back against the cushions. She knew she'd been edgy and short-tempered today, and she hated it, but she just couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong. Having her Walther PPK concealed in a holster at the small of her back, hidden by her baggy sweatshirt, helped a little, as did the knowledge that Zack was armed with a gun of his own. On the rare occasions when a case she was working required her to leave the grounds of Pine Hills, she always carried the handgun, but this was the first time she'd carried it while still at the facility. She hated that, too. The idea that she was in enough danger even on her home ground to need that extra measure of protection was disturbing. One of the best things about living in Pine Hills was the knowledge that she was safe there.

"Miss Dalton?"

Cassie looked up to find Paul, one of the orderlies, standing next to her chair. Lost in thought, she hadn't even noticed his approach.

"Hey, Paul. What's up?"

"You have a visitor."

Paul sounded as surprised as she felt. She glanced over at Zack, who was still lost in his book, and then looked back up at Paul.

"Who is it?" she asked, wondering if someone from the team had heard about what was going on and come down to check on her. She tried not to think about the possibility that maybe this was what Booth had been concerned about, that whoever had killed the other girls was going to make a try for her here.

"He says he's your brother."

She bit her lip, uncertain. "I'll be right there," she said finally, and Paul nodded, heading back toward the reception area. Once Paul was gone, she went over to Zack, tapping him on the shoulder.

"Cassie?" he asked, startled by the unexpected interruption.

"Sorry, Zack. I know you're deep into that book, but Paul says my brother is here to visit me."

"Your brother," Zack repeated. Cassie had two brothers, neither one of whom had exchanged so much as a phone call with her since she'd been institutionalized. It would be exceedingly coincidental for one of them to decide to visit her now, and Zack found it highly unlikely that it was a coincidence at all. "Do you think that it could be the killer that Booth and Dr. Brennan are looking for, posing as a member of your family to gain access to you?"

"Maybe." Zack's first thought had been the same as hers, which told her she'd been right to be suspicious. "Come with me to sneak a look at him, so I can figure out if it's really one of my brothers or some psycho impostor."

"You haven't seen either of your brothers in a number of years," Zack pointed out practically. "How do you know that you'll be able to recognize them?"

The look on her face told him he'd said something wrong, but before he could apologize, she shrugged it off.

"They're my brothers, Zack. I'll know."

The two of them went around to the back door to the reception area, which was only a few feet from the carefully guarded emergency exit door. The presence of any other two patients so close to that exit might have raised an alarm with the staff. They'd all known Cassie for years, though, and neither she nor Zack had ever made any trouble for them. Jake, the orderly on the far side of the room, watched them out of the corner of his eye as Cassie stood up on her tiptoes, doing her best to peek through the small window in the door to the lobby without being seen by anyone on the other side.

"It's definitely one of them," she said slowly. "They both look just like my father."

"Which one?"

She shrugged. "I think it's George, but it could be Ethan." A smile was tugging at her lips now as the realization set in that, after all these years, one of her brothers had finally come to visit her.

"This may not be a good idea," Zack told her.

"What? Why?"

"Consider the parameters of the situation, Cassie. Neither of your brothers has visited you in all the time you've been here -"

"Do you think I don't know that?" she snapped, so vehemently that he actually took half a step back. He couldn't remember Cassie ever raising her voice to him before. "But one of them is finally here, and I'm not going to let you ruin this for me!"

She stormed off toward the main door to the reception area, Zack staring after her with a sinking feeling in his stomach. He didn't believe in intuition, but the intuition he didn't believe in was currently screaming at him that something very bad was about to happen.

With a last glance at the door Cassie had disappeared through, Zack left the day room in search of Dr. Carrington. She was the one who kept encouraging him to pay more attention to his feelings, to make assumptions and guess at things and overall indulge the parts of his thought process that had nothing to do with logic. Maybe she'd listen when he told her that Cassie might be in trouble.

* * *

When Cassie saw him face to face, all of her uncertainty fell away. This was the big brother she remembered from her childhood, the boy who'd given her piggyback rides and bought her ice cream and held her hand when they crossed the street.

"George?"

He smiled at her, and his resemblance to their father took her breath away.

"Cassie." He held his arms out to her and she took a step toward him before she remembered that she wasn't the little girl she'd once been, and touching George would probably have the same effect that touching anyone but Zack did.

"It's really good to see you," she said instead, giving him her best smile and hoping he wouldn't take offense at her refusal to hug him. He let his arms fall to the side, looking more concerned than offended.

"Cassie…we need to talk."

"Sure. Of course," she replied immediately. Her brother's smile had disappeared, and now he looked grim. "What's wrong?"

"It's Ethan."


End file.
